AOF News & Views –
Newsletter for August 2016

Upcoming
Events ² ² ² ² ² ² ² ² ² ² ² ² ² ² ² ² ² ² ² ²

Ø  Reason Center 2nd Anniversary
Celebration                                    Saturday, August 6, 2016, 4 – 6 pm

Not really an AOF event, but how can we not shout this?
Our wonderful Reason
Center (RC) will host a 2nd Anniversary Party this Saturday,
August 6, 4pm-6pm. You are invited! Festivities
will have snacks, crafts, games, trivia, a tour of what Reason Center has
become, and a sharing of visions for the future. Lots of visions.

Really, it will be a
blast. So be ready to party down. Bring sympathetic friends. Note, RC encourages
all who attend to dress in the purple and green spirit of Reason Center
freethinkers.

Location:
Reason Center of course, 1824
Tribute Rd, Suite A, Sacramento. Map: https://goo.gl/iVQL8z.

Ø  Ryan T. Cragun                                                                                      Sunday,
August 14, 2:30 – 4:30 pm

Does
it help? Does it hurt? What You Don't Know About Religion, but Maybe Should!

(Aka: How
to Defeat Religion in 10 Easy Steps)

What should you know about
religion? Besides not drinking the Kool-Aid, that is. OK, so they say nonbelievers,
on average, know more about faith than do believers, on average -- that's a
truism. But truisms aren’t always true. And what you thought you knew, and
don't, might chill your blood to ice.

Ice is nice, especially in August! So Ryan
T. Cragun, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University
of Tampa, Florida, that chirpy-looking fellow, is here to bring us an
irreverent, engaging, and illuminating introduction to the sociological study
of religion for layfolk. Using U.S. and international data, and clear and
simple analyses, Ryan will answer all who have ever asked if religion really
helps or hurts society, or wondered what the future holds for faith.

Another event of the AOF Speaker Series (we say it with pride).

Where will it happen? Where can you hear this
exceptional speaker? Reason Center, of course! RC is a
priceless regional resource for nonbelievers. So priceless that, for this event
only, we suggest a price. That's a voluntary donation of $2 per person. Dare we
call it a love offering?

Location: Reason
Center, 1824 Tribute Rd, Suite A, Sacramento. Map: https://goo.gl/iVQL8z.

Ø  Adopt-a-Highway Cleanup                                                                 Saturday, August 20, 2016, 9-11am

In July 1995,
Sacramento-area freethinkers "adopted" a two-mile stretch of Highway
99 from Elkhorn Boulevard to Elverta Road. Since then we have laboured
to keep it clean of litter and debris, and received recognition for our
work. It is, in fact, one our more successful civic efforts, and shows that
freethinkers can also serve the community!

So this time, why not join us?
Enjoy a morning commune with nature, and do a good deed for the environment and
local area wildlife. The refuse that we collect would otherwise degrade
habitat, leading to a slow death for many creatures.

As usual, the activity captain will
provide all safety equipment, including comfortable, natty hard-hats and
gloves, stylish safety vests, collection bags, and handy trash pickers. The clean-up
takes a scant two hours. Please dress for the season. It may be a good idea to
bring a backpack or fanny-pack to carry 3 or 4 trash bags.

Location :  CalTrans
Park-&-Ride lot, W. Elkhorn Blvd, see map.

(Travel north from Sacramento on I-5, past the Sleeptrain Arena. Take the
"Highway 99 - Yuba City, Marysville" exit. Exit at Elkhorn Boulevard
less than a mile north. Turn left, cross the overpass, and the park-&-ride
lot will be on your left.)

Contact :
916-447-2169 (Don Knutson), or see Contact Page

Ø  Philosophers’ Table: Free Will and
Evil                                                Sunday, August 28, 2016, 12-1pm

This
month’s Philosophers' Table will serve helpings of Free Will and the Problem of
Evil. This classic conundrum of religion and philosophy is a rich
soil for discussion, debate, and occasional brawls. Does dogma chase its tail?
Does dogma catch its tail and bite it? It's a perennial "pet" topic (ohgod
please stop) of the philosophically inclined, who do indeed gnaw on it (please) doggedly (stop). And mind you, it’s not simply
a religious question -- because the conflict of predestination vs. free
will is not all that different from determinism vs. free will. Is it? Or
no? Well, that's why we have these things.

So come to the Table, bring your favourite chew toy,
and share a few gnaws. Afterward, stick around for the monthly Sac-FAN/AOF
joint meeting (Reason Center, 1 to 3 pm), and bring something more edible than
a chew toy for that.

The general rule at Philosophers' Table talks: respect
each other's opinions and feelings, always help the other person be heard, no
dogfights. And clean up after yourself. Really, people.

Location:
Reason
Center, 1824 Tribute Rd, Suite A, Sacramento. Map: https://goo.gl/iVQL8z.

Ø  Keith Swenson: A Question of Snowflakes
Sunday, August 28, 2016, 1-3pm

Snowflakes
in August, yes -- clearly we have an ice theme going on here. But we can learn
lots from this, besides remembering to let your little brat brother
out of the freezer. Because of all areas where science and the Bible have
friction, the topic of origins is
the war zone, the scorched earth. Exactly why do evolution and abiogenesis kick up such emotion? It
may be that by-your-bootstraps thing, auto-creation, and the idea of
organization "creating itself." Even scientifically minded people
struggle with that one.

But we humans are small-minded, insular thinkers. What
we understand at one level may baffle us at another. The molecular
world and the process of long-range natural selection are non-intuitive.
We must get through a mental block, a conceptual bias. A way to do
this is to observe how snowflakes and ice crystals forms. Crystallization is
palpable auto-creation, a spontaneous increase in information without
intelligent meddling. It seems
to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics. But this mistakes the law, a
misunderstanding often promulgated and exploited by creationists.

Intuition may say all things must decay into
randomness, but in fact information (organization), like snowflakes, or
like the delicate frost-ferns on your windowpanes in winter, often evolves
spontaneously on its own. Certain systems display this strange behaviour of
auto-creation all the time. Shake a shoebox of marbles, see them nest
automatically into lovely hexagonal patterns. That's what we mean!

Evolution is one process of auto-creation among
others. We see once we learn to look. And our speaker will help us look.

Keith
Swenson comes to AOF to help us gain a better
understanding of:

Why people find it hard to accept evolution

What the natural cognitive barrier is, and why it
exists

The role that misunderstanding randomness plays

The role that misunderstanding entropy plays

How complex systems display the behaviour of
auto-creation

Several examples of auto creation

(with luck) an improved way to explain why
evolution is really quite reasonable after all!

Location: Reason Center, 1824 Tribute Rd, Suite A, Sacramento. Map: https://goo.gl/iVQL8z.

Ø
Davis Community Meal –
Feed the Hungry                                Tuesday, August
30, 2016, 4:30pm–7pm

Freethinkers
can also serve the community, right? Well, prove it! Join AOF and Sac-FAN in an
effort to feed the poor, the hungry, the indigent, the outcast. Our crack team
will set up tables, greet, serve, and clean a bit at the end. No food preparation—the
Davis Community Meal staff will take care of that part. Your reward is a
possible free meal, camaraderie, loads of gratitude, and an expanded heart.
Plus music by a really fun band, the Regal Beezers.
Can’t make it exactly on time? That’s OK, any help is good help!

Location: St.
Martin's Episcopal, 640 Hawthorne Lane, Davis. Map: https://goo.gl/9FtkrK.

For
more information or carpooling, call: 916-447-2169 (Don).

Ø  Hank & Cleo: A Celebration of
Life                                                 Sunday, September 25, 2016, 1-3pm

It’s not a memorial but
a celebration, a tribute and paean to
the lives of Hank Kocol (July 16, 1937 - Apr 20, 2013) and Cleo Kocol (Jan 12,
1927 - July 5, 2016), AOF charter members, AOF past presidents, artists, activists,
humanists, feminists, sparkling minds, and supporters of our community of
reason for decades. We would not be here without them, not as we are now. Come
share your memories, learn of their amazing adventures together, and possibly
leave with a token. Laugh, speak, eat, remember. More details later. Deep in
our warrens, we are planning.

Location: Reason Center (again), 1824 Tribute Rd, Suite A, Sacramento.
Map: https://goo.gl/iVQL8z.

Visit http://www.aofonline.org/ for more AOF
events (and other news).

Natural vs. Supernatural

by Ken Nahigian

One Christian apologist I admire, somewhat
grudgingly, is James Porter (JP) Moreland. Professor of Philosophy at
Biola University in La Mirada, CA, Moreland has a background in analytic
ontology and philosophy of science, and is even an honorary Board Member of the
Internet Infidels. He seems affable and well-spoken. And I particularly like how
he defines the distinction between Natural and Supernatural in a way that lets
you sink your teeth into it.

Believers & skeptics often argue
over this without defining terms. What exactly is “supernatural,” and how can
we know when we find it? This is an especially troubling question when
you remember Clarke's
Third Law. If “natural”
simply means predictable, then certain quantum events are supernatural. But to define
the supernatural out of existence as many do ("Anything that exists is
natural"), as I have done myself, makes the whole debate seem a bit silly.
Tautological. Non-testable. And ultimately, empty.

Moreland’s answer—not in these
words, but this is my understanding—is that the supernatural exists if the
best, most coherent, most useful and parsimonious explanation for something
must include some element of consciousness, teleology or subjective intent.

Suppose after much study we finally
develop a model that completely explains everything,
ties it all up in a neat knot; a model as purely mechanical as billiard balls
bumping together, plus perhaps a dash of pure randomness. Then would we know
the universe is natural. But suppose the final answer we are driven to is that
things are a certain way only because something in them “wants” or “intends”
this or that outcome. Then we would know that a bit of supernatural is in the
mix.

The something need not be the Christian God of course, nor any god—perhaps
the tooth fairy, or just some ambient, nonspecific magic. But this, to
Moreland, is what supernatural means.

Of course it’s just his definition,
which you can reject if you have a better. And of course some difficultly
remains in deciding what constitutes a “final” explanation. Perhaps if we
work at it just a bit longer, we can reduce the perceived intentionality to
more billiard ball bumpings. But at least the idea is within a
conceptual box; at least we can work with it.

I might disagree with Moreland on much
else, but this distinction satisfies my sense of neatness. So, yes, kudos
to him.

Support the
Reason Center

This again? Yes,
this. Reason Center opened in July 2014, two years ago.  Since then it has hosted well over 200
freethough events. Currently the Center has twelve partner organizations. It
has opened its venue to the public. It’s rolling.

The Reason Center
mission is to support a social and intellectual community for freethinkers,
contribute to society through education and community service, advance the
civic understanding and acceptance of freethinkers, and uphold the separation
of religion and government.

So good, so far.
The work continues. But to continue to continue, it relies on continued support
for its members and donors. Please consider becoming a Reason Center member or
supporter. To set up a monthly or one-time donation visit ReasonCenter.org.
(And yes, donations are tax deductible, so it really does come back to you. Not
like a bad pizza.)

Have blood?

If you do, congratulations. Now donate some of
it at the BloodSource. And then use AOF BloodSource ID# 4857.

Numerous BloodSource Donation Centers exist --
find them listed at:  http://www.bloodsource.org/Locations.

Donating blood saves lives, and what is more Humanistic
than that?

Not yet a member of Atheists and Other Freethinkers?  Well, why not? Join us!

AOF is a
501(c)(3) non-profit association, FEIN 68-0325762. General Meetings are free
and open to the public.  AOF also hosts
civic service projects, dinners, movie outings, parties! To see what awaits
you, visit the website,  www.aofonline.org; or contact AOF at our 24/7 voice-mail: 916-447-3589; or
write to PO Box 15182, Sacramento, CA 95851-0182. Or talk to us. We love
questions.

AOF
President: Kristi Craven. Vice-president: Mynga Futrell. Editor: Fabulous Fran
Evanisko. And all the rest.

“The purpose of Atheists and Other
Freethinkers (AOF) is to promote the civic understanding of atheism and the
acceptance of atheists in our community.
Through educational programs, projects, and publications, AOF will
extend secular perspectives, including the separation of religion and
government and the right to think and speak freely on these perspectives.”

The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly
monopolized learning.... And, even since the Reformation, when or where has
existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The
blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish
brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But
touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the
clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the
hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes.

~ John Adams

(Thanks yet again to xkcd.com.)